Rapid transport service in a network to peripheral device servers

A system for connecting serial devices to a local area network comprising:

• a device server in communication with the local area network, the device server comprising:
• serial connectors for linking one or more serial devices to the device server;
• an operating system;
• and
• applications running on the operating system for coordinating communications between the operating system, the local area network, and the serial device;
• a serial driver installed on a host computer and for mediating between host application software and host operating system software installed on the host computer, the host computer being in communication with the local area network, wherein the serial driver transmits serial data from the host application software over the local area network to a selected serial device linked via one of the serial connectors to the device server;
• wherein the applications transfer one or more bytes of the serial data from a buffer of the device server to a memory queue associated with the selected serial device when the one or more bytes appears in the buffer without waiting for a specified byte count or a polling period.

A system for connecting serial devices to a network, the system comprising:

• host driver software installed on a host computer connected to the network, wherein the host driver software interfaces with host application software and host operating system software, the host operating system software having a serial port application program interface, wherein the host driver software receives serial port data over the network using the serial port application program interface, the serial port application interface comprising:
• an intercharacter interval timer that measures a time interval between the end of a stop signal of one character and the beginning of a start signal of a next character;
• and
• an intercharacter interval setting;
• wherein the application program interface terminates a read operation when the time interval measured by the intercharacter interval timer exceeds the intercharacter interval setting
• and
• a device server connected to the network and in electrical communication with one or more serial devices, the device server comprising:
• an intercharacter interval timer that measures a time interval between the end of a stop signal of one character and the beginning of a start signal of a next character:
• and
• an intercharacter interval setting;
• wherein the device server receives the serial port data over the network and measures an intercharacter interval corresponding to the intercharacter interval timer setting of the serial port application program interface, and wherein the device server returns a flag to the host computer when the time interval measured by the intercharacter interval timer exceeds the intercharacter interval setting, and wherein the flag signals the host computer that a read operation has terminated.

A method for facilitating communication between a host computer and a serial device over a network, the method comprising:

• transmitting data in a standard serial port format over a local area network to a selected serial device;
• receiving the data at a device server connected to the network, the device server having one or more serial ports connected to one or more serial devices, one of the one or more serial devices being the selected serial device;
• storing the received data temporarily in a buffer;
• reading the received data from the buffer;
• writing the read data to a FIFO register associated with the selected serial device, such that if the FIFO register is empty, the read data is written to the FIFO register until the FIFO register is full and the remaining data is written to a memory queue associated with the selected serial device.

A method for eliminating synchronization latencies in a remote device server for facilitating communication between a host computer and a selected serial device, the method comprising:

• receiving a read-operation-ending intercharacter interval value corresponding to the selected serial device over a network link from the host computer to the remote device server;
• transmitting data in a standard serial port format over a network link from the selected serial device to the remote device server;
• receiving the data with the remote device server;
• measuring an intercharacter interval of the data with the remote device server by comparing the end of a stop signal of one character and the beginning of a start signal of a next character;
• transmitting the data over the network link from the remote device server to the host computer;
• transmitting a flag over the network link from the remote device server to the host computer when the intercharacter interval of the data from the selected serial device exceeds the read-operation-ending intercharacter interval value corresponding to the selected serial device;
• receiving the flag with the host computer;
• and
• terminating a read operation at the host computer.